Spare our stray dogs!

While the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike picked up stray dogs after cases of dogs mauled children, many people plead to the BBMP to spare the stray dogs they love. While one lady threatened to commit suicide if her dogs were picked up, others asked the government to first kill Noida child killer Mohninder Singh, before killing the dogs.

Though the dog catching squad feel sad for the dog lovers, they act stone-hearted. V Shivakumar who accompanied the dog catching squad met a young lady in Jayanagar 9th block who was weeping and pleading to the squad asking them not to take away the dogs in her street. “My heart moved at the sight. But we had to take the dogs away,” he said

Netravathi, a domestic help in JP Nagar has 30 stray dogs as her pets, and has been staying awake since three nights just to protect her dogs. “If they pick up even one of my dogs, my daughter and I will commit suicide before Vidhana Soudha. We have nobody else, other than these dogs.” She has got the dogs sterilized and also vaccinated. “Whenever the dog catching squad takes my dogs, I give Rs 100 to the driver so that the dog is returned after strilisation. I give another Rs 100 when they return the dogs.” She argues that the government should first kill the kidnappers and murderers and then question the dogs. “Let them remove their teeth, but not kill them.”

75-year old H Suryanarayanan and his 70-year old wife Jayamma have eight mongrels to give them company at their house in Jayanagar Two among them, Julie and Moni even sleep with the couple in their bedroom. From the time Suryanarayanan heard of the dog catching drive, he has been calling all the helplines and the BMP to stop the drive. “He has even been weeping on the thought of losing the pets,” said Jayamma. The couple feed milk, bread, rusk, rice and pedas everyday. “They eat only Iyengar bakery bread, and they love pedas. I get one and a half kg koya every week and make pedas for them,” said Suryanarayanan. They also take the dogs for treatment if they fall sick. The couple feels that innocent dogs should not be killed because of one incident. “Humans forget the love given to them, but dogs don’t.” Whenever the dog squad comes to catch the dogs for vaccination, he bribes them so that they leave back the dogs in the same place.

Idris Khan, the managing director of K K Color Accurates Limited takes care of four mongrels in Kanakapura road. “Humans have to understand that dog is also created by God. It is less intelligent and so we have to take care of them, just the way we take care of our children whose intelligent is lesser than that of adults.” He too condemns the catching the dogs. “These dogs are sterilized and vaccinated, then why do they want to catch them again?” he asks.

Nayi Raja (Dog King) Ramakrishna takes care of 27 stray dogs in Basavanagudi. He says that he will beat up the dog catching squad, if is comes in his area. “We humans are acting worse then dogs, by killing them. BMP says it will only kill ferocious dogs, but how do they say that the dog is ferocious?” he asks. He feels that dogs are not actually a problem, but that is all media-hype. “The sterilization of dogs is going on well. After sometime, there will be no problem at all. But killing dogs is condemnable.”

Savitha Nagbhushan, a wild life photographer pets four dogs in her street in Jayanagar. She feeds them eggs and rice also gives them medication. As a part of her photography assignments, she had seen dogs being electrocuted and killed, five years ago. “They used to be put in a page and given an electric shock of 400 volts. Now, other measures are used, but we should not resort to killing them. Let them be sterilized,” she said.